Shared Storage Pools - just got even more interesting !   SSP Clusters with disks pools and super fast disk allocation VIOS Shared Storage Pools (phase 3) allows 16 VIOS on different machines to operate as a VIOS cluster with a set of SAN LUNs in the pool - think in terms of a number of TBs of disk space in the pool. The VIOS systems administrator can then allocate disk space to a new or existing Virtual Machine (LPAR) in around a second which can be thin or thick provisioning regardless of the underlying disks. This drastically reduces the... [More]

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I HAVE UPDATED THIS BLOG WITH BETTER, UP TO DATE AND CORRECTED INFORMATION FROM THE DEVELOPERS Read the comments for lots of useful information - Thanks Guys for the corrections WARNING: Advance Technology Support (ATS) Europe is getting reports today from users and IBMers that the POWER7 firmware 770 level as a pre-req check missing! could be much better . This results in the HMC agreeing to upgrade your POWER7 or POWER7+  machine to firmware level 770, when it is not supported and does not work. This causes very bad problems: On smaller... [More]

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Our Advanced Technology Support, Europe team have had a few months secretly testing the Power 750/760 internally to IBM as part of the normal Early Ship Program which lets a few machine out of the development labs to be tested by others to gain feedback on the product, documentation, features and usability. I thought others would like to see a few pictures of the team and the equipment involved. Please note: This is an Early Ship Machine, so there are a few details like stickers and handle colours that may differ slightly from the final product... [More]

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Hot news this morning is IBM announcing the updating of the Lower End Power 710/730 and Power 720/740 models to include Power7+ processor with 2.5 larger L3 cache, Active Memory Expansion accelerator, and GHz boost Double the memory size This gives a large performance boost and drastically higher "bangs per buck" as the Americans say or "Value for money" as we Brits say. Almost everything else is the same so if you know the older models it is easy to understand Announcement letters for the new Power7+ models: Power 710 ,... [More]

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Another good questions from a customer and my answer was simple:   The PowerVM internal network on POWER machines operates just like a physical network. If two LPAR are on the same internal network and the root user puts the virtual adapter in to promiscuous mode then it can see all packets. Just like a physical network. If the two LPARs are on different internal networks then they can never see the other LPARs packets. Just like two physical networks. If two LPAR are on the same internal network but on different VLANs then they can never see... [More]

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  The new  VIOS Shared Storage Pools 3 (SSP3) arrived a month ago and I have all my VIOS updated now to VIOS 2.2.2.1 plus fixes. This brings with it the regular VIOS improvements but also new features for SSP3 including: Better pool use stats for example see the below lssp command and the Used percentage and Unused(mb) columns and the over view output too has new data $ lssp -clustername stars -sp atlantic -bd Lu Name     Size(mb) ProvisionType %Used Unused(mb) Lu Udid orange7a    32768    THIN             9% 29615        7d58538152 …... [More]

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Time to correct a few assumptions and statements that I made a while back.   Previously I said the POWER Hypervisor decides where to put a Virtual Machine (VM/LPAR) based on the Virtual Processor number (spreading factor). Well, apart from it nearly being right ... I was actually wrong! I got talking to one of these very impressive Hypervisor developers in Germany and he put me right.  In most of my larger machines, I do what I think is fairly normal for creating an VM - like working with a CPU core to RAM ratio that my customers use, like 1... [More]

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 I am currently updating my AIX systems and AIX 7 TL2 with its first service pack is now available for download from ESS or IBM Entitlem Software Support to spell it out in full (http://www.ibm.com/servers/eserver/ess) for install media and FixCentral for updates (http://www-933.ibm.com/support/fixcentral/). While downloading the install media files I noticed there is a new Firefox for AIX available Firefox V3.6.25.  This is a jump up from the previous one and I have had (in the past) a few annoying problems with Firefox on AIX Some weird issue... [More]

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Four things I think you should know before you try this: The documentation for the update can be found here:  http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=hpc1vios117f5701 I updated three of my Virtual I/O Servers to 2.2.2.1 from 2.2.1.4 over the weekend.  I started these late on Friday night with the "no reboot" options and they finished about the same time on Sunday afternoon i.e. 48 hours . The Release Manager downloads the update directly to the VIOS /opt/VIOS/update/VIOS and sub directory for the release name and this takes over... [More]

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